Your first class: what to expect
What to wear, when to arrive and what happens in the room.
How our teachers plan a week of 46 classes
Weekly themes, Sunday planning meetings and notes on every student: what goes into a timetable before you see it.
We run 46 classes a week with five teachers. Students see a timetable; behind it is a fair amount of planning, most of it done on Sunday afternoons after the meditation circle.
Each week has a theme that runs through every class style, such as hips, shoulders, balance or the breath. On a hips week, the beginner hatha class might spend time on supported lunges and a long pigeon posture, vinyasa builds towards a standing split, and strength for yogis adds kettlebell deadlifts. The theme means a student who comes to three different classes feels a thread connecting them.
At the Sunday meeting, Meenakshi, who leads the teaching team, goes through the coming week class by class. Teachers share notes on regular students: who mentioned a sore knee, who is pregnant and has told us, who is ready to try a headstand with support and who is not. These notes live in a shared notebook at the desk, and every teacher reads them before class.
Teachers also cover for each other. If Karthik is away, whoever takes his 6 am class reads his last three plans so the sequence makes sense to his regulars. Once a quarter, all five teachers spend a full day training together, taking each other’s classes and giving feedback. We think students notice the difference, even if they never see the notebook.
